Note: We don’t view te #WaveOfAction as a potential last gasp of Occupy. It is one more series of protests and resistance efforts that will continue no matter how large the #WaveOfAction protests are. It is up to the people how large the protests are, how creative and how effective. This is part of the process of building a mass movement — a movement that is much more than the occupy encampments were.

What will prove to be either the last gasp of the Occupy Movement, or its Renaissance as a social powerhouse, will lie in the success and its embrace of a highly-publicized #WaveOfAction which launches a major 90-day program of protest and resistance on April 4.

The Wave begins, symbolically, on the date of the assassination of Martin Luther King and ends, symbolically, on July the 4th. It will run from the date of the death of a dream that will not die to the date of the birth of a vision which has yet to be fulfilled.

So, what is the purpose of this ambitious campaign, who is behind it, and what can we expect of it – and of ourselves? The purpose is stated on its website and is quite clear.

We are a Movement of Movements

“The Worldwide #WaveOfAction begins April 4th and runs through July 4th.

During this three-month cycle, people throughout the world will be protesting corruption, rallying around solutions and taking part in alternative systems. The new paradigm will be on full display.

Studies have proven that it only takes 3.5% of the population taking nonviolent action to create meaningful and positive change. The #WaveOfAction gives all of us who want change a powerful opportunity to #EvolveSociety.

Change-makers all over the world will be engaged at the same time in an unprecedented wave of transformation.”

OK, that sounds acceptable (to most of the 99%, and certainly not the 1%). Now, who is behind this?

I confess that I can’t say that I have figured that out. It appears to be nobody. Or, perhaps everybody. Or, a coterie of patriots/anarchists/misfits who – such as when Zuccotti Park came to be occupied – are taking it upon themselves to rekindle that Occupy fire.

Word has it that #OWS #Anon and its allies put out a call to action for a World Wide Wave of creative community coordination and collaboration this winter. There were two organizing conference calls prior to April 4. One on March 25, and the other on April 2. (David Degrawis one of the facilitators)

Whoever started it, it can be said that occupiers around the world are standing with it, and many called in to declare that support and to announce events they were planning locally.

But, they are coming up against a very familiar foe – themselves.

The Naysayers…and worse

Anyone familiar with Occupy knows that it is rife with the usual suspects: gripers, snipers and full-blown trolls whose only purpose seems to be that of making sure that “solidarity” will never be had. “How dare (someone/something) do/be (provide the offense).” Everything is suspect, and anyone taking a lead roll is to be suspected.

Whether or not this will affect the success of #WaveOfAction will not be known for some time, but the offenders are being put on notice. Activist and creater of Occu-Evolve,Sumumba Sobukwe, had this to say:

“The Irony of those complaining about this ‘Wave of Action’ is that it will only be a failure if they continue to find fault with EVERYTHING that ‘reeks’ of coordination that might make people move beyond facebook,twitter and other social media ‘activism’ as well as their own silos of causes and interests to actually go out and organize with others in the streets.”

He continues, “When did an ‘occupy’ action ever draw more than a few hundred people that didn’t have unions, grassroots or other groups involved? Who are we fooling here? Occupy has ALWAYS been made up of different groups and individuals, and that’s where the concept of the ’99%’ came closest to being real or at least unifying in theory.”

So, in addition to proving Pogo’s theorem, “We have met the enemy, and they are us,” what other odds militate against the campaign having any major effect? Let me count the ways:

1. A largely indifferent press. Activists deride the “MainStream Media” for not paying attention to even the largest of its protests and greatest of its triumphs. Occupy is hardly alone. Last year’s March Against Monsanto which attracted a half-million marchers or more worldwide did not find its way into print or broadcast in any meaningful way. (P.S. Occupy folk helped make that march happen, as well).

A police force dedicated to crushing public dissent. Naaaah, that can’t be happening here in America, right? That’s what you find in Russia, or Egypt, or China. Thank God that “to serve and protect” applies to citizens in the street and peaceful protestors, yes? Here’s a retired cop who has a word or two on that, Captain Ray Harris. Oh, and not to forget Cecily McMillan’s experience with the Boys in Blue which finds her at risk of jail time for resisting their abuse.

Elected officials. One would think that people who are elected to represent us willactually represent us, and that they will be at the front of any parade or protest demanding justice and protecting civil liberties. Think again. If you ain’t got the money (and few occupiers/activists do), they ain’t got the time. And, if their party can’t co-opt your movement for their betterment, they’ll be the first to applaud authorities who arrest you. Hell, they will demand that force be used.

The 1%. You can be certain that the #WaveOfAction will be countered by a #FloodOfMoney spent to discredit its work and mission. Did I mention Fox? CNN? Stay tuned and see how money talks.

So, I leave it to you, the reader. Will this be a “Wave,” or a “Wave Goodbye” on the part of Occupy and its brother and sister causes? Will you listen to the detractors within and the enemies without and surrender to the impossible forces against you?

Or, will you take comfort in your own, amazing numbers and brilliance and continue to fight the good fight as so many have before you in America’s history. You are the dream that Martin referred to, and the nightmare that the 1% are waking up to.

No one but the most addled hippie really likes a drum circle, but only the war-like LAPD could possibly see one as any kind of threat. Hundreds of people assemble every Sunday by the Venice boardwalk for the Venice Drum Circle, a public gathering in a public space that rarely if ever results in any reports of bad behavior, except when the LAPD shows up to cause trouble for no real reason. (Even an LAPD officer describes the drum circle as a “peaceful occurrence.”) But for the past three weeks the LAPD has attempted to break up the peaceful gatherings once the sun has set, because them’s the rules, and the drummers have refused, because they’ve got a good groove going or whatever. So the LAPD has gone into full riot response. On a drum circle.

Last night, between 400 and 500 people were again causing no trouble at all when the LAPD came in to shut them down; when most people stayed, “an airship and multiple LAPD units executed a skirmish line [to] the push the crowd north,” according to Venice 311. A few people threw things, so they “called for a specialized unit from the Metro division which includes SWAT and mounted units for assistance,” which they had to cancel eventually because the crowd was like “whatever” after just 25 minutes. Everyone ended up dispersing pretty easily; one person who rushed the police line and another who “refused to move,” according to KTLA, were arrested.

LIVE NOW [4pm Sunday]: Solidarity with the Venice Drum Circle
1000 Ocean Front Walk ‪#‎WaveOfAction‬
Join us to bear witness to the evening dispersal orders issued to the Sunday Venice Beach drum circle. It is our human right to have 24/7 access to life sustaining waterways such as the ocean and drum alongside waves without being forced out by riot police.

It is planned to be a long weekend filled with hacking anything related to MediaWiki or one of the Wikimedia projects (and sometimes other things, too). The Hackathon is completely open; we welcome both seasoned and new developers, as well as people working on MediaWiki, tools, pywikibot, gadgets, extensions, templates, etc.

Venue and Accommodation

The venue and accommodation will be both at the same site: Youth Hostel Zürich, Switzerland. All conference rooms are available to us including a nice yard. We have a big main conference hall and three workshop rooms. There is a beer bar in the Foyer of the Youth Hostel.

unearthed Europlugs (Type C) are compatible – other European plugs (such as Schuko) are not as their contacts are thicker than the sockets.

The Youth Hostels lends power adapters for many common plug types (for free, just a deposit required which will be given back upon return of the adapter).

Catering

Meals will be provided by the Youth Hostel in the venue. They serve different options of Halal / Kosher / vegetarian / vegan food by default. Food is marked in English.

We will be provided with a Coffee Station where fresh coffee can be brewed 24/7 in our conference room, including soft drinks. This is free for our participants.

Travel and Directions

Wikimedia CH will send you a public transport ticket, valid May 8th – 12th for Zürich City Centre and Airport, via e-mail. You just have to print it and bring it. You do not need to buy any public transport tickets unless you are going to do your own tour outside the city or do not arrive / leave from Zürich Airport.

The venue can easily be reached by public transport:

Zürich Airport (ZRH) to Zürich Hauptbahnhof (main station)

at the airport any train on platform 3 or 4 (via Zürich HB – Main Station)

after 11 minutes get off at Zürich HB (3rd or 1st stop, depending on train type)

Zürich Hauptbahnhof (main station) to Zürich Wollishofen

at Zürich Hauptbahnhof take any train on platform 51 or 52 (to Pfäffikon SZ or Horgen Oberdorf)

take Tram line 13 (towards Albisgütli) from Hauptbahnhof to Waffenplatzstrasse

switch to bus line 33 (towards Morgental) or bus line 66 (towards Neubühl) and get off at Thujastrasse.

walk 1 minute to the hostel.

train ticket are only dependant on the relation, not on the train type – you can take any train (S, Regional, IR, IC, ICN…)

Do not buy local transport tickets from / to the airport to / from the Youth Hostel yet as we plan to provide them to you in advance.

Visa

Switzerland belongs to the Schengen Area. You can check on the website of the Federal Office for Migration if you need a visa, which requirements apply and which documents / proofs you must submit to obtain a visa. Wikimedia CH will provide Visa Assistance.

Check the box for visa assistance on the registration form and provide us with some additional personal information.

Rooms

Workshops

Topics

Sprints

Regular contributors plus some newcomers hack together with a shared goal.

Recommendation engines

A lot of regular users end up reading one article on Wikipedia (through Google Search) and other articles which they need as pre-requisites. It would be interesting to have a recommendation engine for Wikipedia, Wikiquotes and Wikisource.

Production-like Vagrant

Our goal is to make a handful of high-priority puppet roles available to MediaWiki-Vagrant to make developer instances of Vagrant closer to a production-like environment. The ultimate idea is to provide a uniform developer-focussed instance to Mediawiki engineers to facilitate better testing of new and existing code, while also making it easy for new engineers to get started hacking on Mediawiki and Mediawiki with minimal friction for bringing new features to production. The first hurdle will be to provide some crucial production services in MediaWiki-Vagrant, which will be our focus for the Hackathon. Possible services to focus on include

Varnish

SSL

MariaDB

Memcache/Redis

CentralAuth

For more information, view our notes from initial conversations about this project.

Maps integration

The idea is to bring pin map templates, geohack, wikiminiatlas, openstreetmap, Extension:Maps, Special:NearBy, mobile, coordinates extension etc etc etc, more together in a way that works for mobile, desktop, micro and macro contributions. It would be handy if before hand we can do some exploratory work to create a more focused effort during the hackathon: Zürich_Hackathon_2014/Geo_Namespace.

Züriplan

It is possible to get the Maps of the open government data portal under CC0: www.stadtplan.stadt-zuerich.ch. Maybe it would be a good task to “milk” that map and store the maps in Commons. —Micha 11:18, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Workshops

Experts meet novices to share knowledge in hands-on tasks.

Intergration of Open Government Data in Wikidata and other Wikimedia projects

There are a lot of open government data developing with interesting data which can be used for wikimedia projects. For example: The data of polls and referendums, the populations of cities and municipalities, the public art in cities (interesting for Wiki Loves Public Art). How can the data of that portals be transfered automatically to the wikimedia projects. For example generating a script on the tool server which checks daily if some numbers have changed. If yes, it transfers the data to wikidata and from there the data is included in the infoboxes of the Wikipedia articles. Or how can the list of public arts or of other objects (ex. fountains) in wikipedia be updated automatically if there is a new object or an object has been removed.

The RACHEL Project

RACHEL (www.rachel.worldpossible.org) is now reaching over one million users worldwide who lack access to reliable internet. The project was a weekend prototype by just a few Cisco employees years ago. Please consider lending your web development, perl skills (dev.worldposible.org), or linux ideas to help us enhance this fantastic product (as seen on BBC, CNN, RaspberryPi.org and much more). Currently, foreign language wikipedia inclusion requires running a second webserver dedicated to wikipedia, an inefficient use of resources in places where these are scarce. Help us integrate foreign language wikipedia without running a second server (biblioteca.worldpossible.org).

Interested persons:

Jeremy Schwartz <jeremy@worldpossible.org>

<add yourself>

Wikibase architecture overview

An introduction to the Wikibase architecture and components aimed at potential new contributors. Wikibase is the software behind the Wikidata project. In this session you will get a high level overview of the wider wikibase codebase, which functionality can be found where, and how the different parts interact. Novice developers can attend, no special knowledge is required.

Clean Code

Full title: Clean Code, and other requirements for contributing to Wikibase

This is an introduction to the topic of clean code. It covers basic design principles, effective use of tests, and many general best practices. Want to know how to write code that is easier to maintain? Want to avoid spending so much time in the debugger? Want to write code that reads like well written prose? Want to become more effective at the craft of software development? Then this session is definitely for you.

This introduction is broad and covers a lot of ground. While many topics will not be covered in the depth they deserve, references to other material will be provided. The focus on the most common problem points and practical solutions.

A lot of the topics that will be covered are part of the contribution guidelines for the Wikibase software. Examples from Wikibase will also be used in places, though this session is by no means Wikibase specific.

Mobile walk-in and talk-in

Is mobile a mystery to you? Can’t get MobileFrontend setup? Don’t understand why your favourite desktop features don’t work on mobile? Want to know how to work on the latest Wikipedia apps? Do you want to make mobile things and don’t know how? Does one of your projects look great on a desktop and terrible on a mobile device?

This workshop will be an unstructured session where you can ask all these questions and get some answers. Members of the mobile team will be available to answer your questions and give you hands on help on anything you need.

mediawiki.ui for developers

mw-ui-button mw-ui-constructive mw-ui-quiet mw-ui-lolwtfbbq

mediawiki.ui implements the evolving “Agora” visual style for buttons and forms in MediaWiki software. Learn how to apply it in your extensions and gadgets to deliver attractive consistent appearance. Actual real-life visual designers will be on-hand to give you advice and get feedback about what controls would be useful.

Flow for bot and tool developers

Flow is a modern discussion and collaboration system for WMF wikis. However, Flow pages aren’t talk pages, so bots and semi-automated editing tools (e.g., Huggle, Twinkle) will have to adapt to handle them. Come explore the new Flow API and help us make improvements that will support some of the most important processes on our projects!

MediaWiki-Vagrant Bootcamp

Introduction to using MediaWiki-Vagrant to manage a development environment for hacking on MediaWiki. We’ll do a really quick high level look at what Vagrant is and how MediaWiki-Vagrant uses and extends it. Then we’ll learn just enough Puppet to understand what “roles” are and how to use them to configure your MediaWiki-Vagrant instance. Participants will then get hands on by creating roles to install and configure extensions used on Commons that are not yet available in MediaWiki-Vagrant.

Tool Labs workshop

An event-long workshop with Coren; hands-on migration, debugging and creation of tools on the Tool Labs. Join in and leave at any time; there will be impromptu and planned breakaway tutorials on various related topics as interest demands (planned: using gridengine tutorial, database query optimization (including federated tables), how to deploy web services).

OAuth Workshop

How to help pywikibot

Pywikibot is the most popular framework for running bots but how we can help improving pywikibot? There are several ways to help including solving and reporting bugs, wrangling bugs, bug triage and areas of developing including support of Wikibase and Wikidata, porting functionality from compat to core, and or network optimization (in order to reduce pressure on WMF servers)

Translate extension workshop

Nikerabbit is there to explain how the Translate extension works. Let’s fix your most wanted (or hated) Translate bugs together or work on new features.

Possible bigger topics to work on, depending on the interest:

Repository management. Translatewiki.net is using a collection of shell scripts to manage all repositories where translations are exported to and imported from. Lack of better repository management is blocking further progress on areas like automation of imports and exports.

Translate extension provides an translation editor, support for many different types of content, translation memory, statistics ad lots more. It is also very old and big extension, while also adopting new technologies like composer and CSS grid based interface.

Refactoring Core for Fame and Profit

This session will show how to refactor parts of MediaWiki core in order to improve modularity. The focus will be on backwards compatibility and testability. The TitleValue RFC will serve as an example.

Meetings

Future of version control, bug reporting and other developer tools

It’s been 2 years since we setup the current infrastructure around developer tools with Gerrit and Jenkins. Not everyone’s happy and things break more often than we like. Additionally there’s been rumblings for years about getting rid of Bugzilla. I think it’s high time we have a discussion about what we envision our ideal development environment to be and figure out what it would take to get us there. Are there any tools (hint hint: Phabricator) that can help get us most of the way there?

Tech People meeting Regular Users

A workshop (preferably in the early evening) to invite local users, beginners but also power users, who want to learn more about MediaWiki, our infrastructure and more. Kind of a “Ask the Developers” session but more informal.

Unclear

Proposals that seem to need clarification. Feel free moving them in any of the categories above.

Local Wikipedia forks

“Semi-autonomous instances of localized Wikipedia”. Expand on the work of SOS Children, the Rachel Project to create packaged snapshots of Wikipedia contents that can be deployed on local storage e.g. SD cards in a tablet computer, 3G WiFi router, etc. and on a Raspberry Pi, etc. Ideally there’ll be bi-directional updates from the local instance to Wikipedia and from Wikipedia to the local instance – asynchronous synchronization. People using one of these snapshot instances would be able to create new content and revise existing contents. One of the main goals is to help extend the reach locality and relevance of Wikipedia for people throughout the world.

I’ve been doing some work in this area already and will bring hardware, etc. to demo and test our work.

There’s lots of known-unknowns for this project. With your help I hope we’ll be able to

Not interested if it’s yet another offline Wikipedia work, but I’d be interested if this was focused on Kiwix/ZIM incremental updates + the ability to edit locally (and then submit changes). —Nemo 14:29, 6 February 2014 (UTC)

Except for the “edit feature”, what you mean seems to exist already. At least two Kiwix developers will be there during the 3 days. 188.61.123.117 09:11, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

The new face of MediaWiki.org

There’s an initiative to rework MediaWiki.org. We should discuss the plans and outcomes in order to make MediaWiki.org a site that is easy to use and valuable to all of us, be it users, site maintainers, core and extension developers and any other intersted parties. Let’s go over the new design and make this a state-of-the-art site a so wide spread software like MediaWiki deserves!

Scheduled for today so we can protesttheconference of Conspirators, those business and government officials who are meeting to force fracking through against the public interest and before the public have been warned of the danger.

Officials who have their head in a box and are prepared to destroy the world for profit.

We know they have re-located their conference for fear of us and we know where it is.

We will stick to our original plan: meet at our Battersea studio, march over the bridge to the King’s Rd, join fellow protestors at Knightsbridge tube then move to the original location of the conference, a stone’s throw away at Jumeira Hotel. We will give our speeches outside and then go to the secret location.

Battersea. We were ready. I had given all our workmates the day off. Cindy the youngest member of Climate Revolution had done a great job mustering the troops and organizing our students to make plaquards. Others who joined us were in carnival mood, dressed as zombies and ghouls.

I hadn’t wanted a carnival. It’s a matter of life and death and I didn’t wear my warpaint. We want to attract “ordinary people” and by that we mean people who aren’t normally political. But our activist colleagues were right we needed the Carnival. We were only expecting up to 500 people and that’s how it turned out. It was a week day, also Budget Day. Did the conspirators plan that?- don’t underestimate their fear of the public. John Sauven, head of Greenpeace couldn’t come because he was dealing with press on the budget. And what about students? Simon, a student activist friend should have been organizing but he didn’t even show up: because he’s doing his exams. Come on !

We looked great. There was lots of press. I was asked to lead the procession. I bowed and put my hands together in prayer, as you would before a battle. Then off we were!

People in King’s Rd hailed us in support and Cindy shouted out, keeping us all together because of having to stop for traffic. I talked to some of my friends as we marched along. At the Jumeirah Hotel we met Rhythm of Resistance, a samba band and campaigner Nigel with his demo/disco bus. In front of the hotel was a little square where we gave our speeches and thanked the fighters in the anti-fracking camps. Vanessa Vine From Balcombe is an inspiring speaker and full of powerful information. She’s been fighting fracking for 3 years and is just back from America. The queen of it all was scientist Tisha who was responsible for much of the organization and acted as a master of ceremonies –the prettiest ghoule you ever saw but she stays anonymous so you can’t see a photo of her. Then some of us got on Nigel’s bus and went to the secret location near to Bunyon Fields near Old St.

When we got near I looked out the window and saw another demonstration walking down the main road and they looked really interesting, lots of them, then I read the plaquards and realized it was us, the others had come on the tube. (They had a good time explaining to people what we are about – life and death, yeah!) We met our mole who had been inside the conference so we are informed of the conspirator’s agenda. See their confidential presentation www.talkfracking.org. The secret location was Armoury House on City Rd.

The samba band was really important – lots of drumming outside the gates. The press asked me,

“How do you feel that the pro-frackers have come here to escape you, protected by the army?”

You sometimes worry that you’re so small against the enormous power of theconspiracy to destroy – press, politics, business, banks – and what perhaps only seems to be the acquiescence of the general public. It is heartening to read those articles of mutual support in the fight, from journalists of the standard press, especially the Guardian and those on the Internet and of course the support of all the NGO’s and sometimes great groups of people. At our demo someone gave out flyers for the Green Party, a great group with whom I entirely agree. They start by condemning austerity. If all the world would put their financial programme into practise we could save the earth and economic collapse.

It’s so important to demonstrate for your beliefs. We will win because we have to.

Now that you’ve seen The People REVOLT in Tunisia, Turkey, Spain, Egypt, Brazil and the Ukraine, tell me what will happen on the streets

On April 4th, we will launch the first phase of the Worldwide Wave of Action by gathering at Zuccotti Park and former occupation sites throughout the world to honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. At 6:05pm CT, the time of his assassination, we will host vigil ceremonies and resurrect his spirit of nonviolent direct action.

People with opinions across the political spectrum are invited to unite and find common ground against corruption. We will overcome divide and conquer propaganda by forming communities of support and compassion. Together we will fight for freedom and begin engaging in a relentless campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience. People will pledge to take part in whatever tactics they are interested in throughout a sustained three-month cycle. Here’s a basic list of tactics…

You know what you can do to play a part. Do whatever you feel inspired to do. Amplify what you are already doing. Think about what you are willing to do to be the change we urgently need to see in the world, and then do it.

From Fullerton to Durham, the police continue their oppression and walk away with impunity. We must shatter the illusion of complacency. They protect a system of that destroys our earth and the animals that walk it, they are the wall between the people and justice. On the 15th of March, join us in the streets, show Portland we aren’t ready to aquiesce. Meet at Colonel Summers park(20th and Belmont), We meet a 8pm and march at 9. Bring banners, fireworks, friends, and whatever you think is appropriate. We will respect each other, in whatever tactics folks choose to engage in. We encourage people to help with postering, telling friends, banner drops, making leaflets, just articulating your hatred for the cops. Let’s bring some more people out this time!!FTP!

International Day Against Police Brutality is observed on March 15, 2014. It first began in 1997 as an initiative of the Montreal based Collective Opposed to Police Brutality and the Black Flag group in Switzerland. Acceptance of March 15 as a focal day of solidarity against police brutality varies from one place to another.

In the United States, the October 22Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation, a group mounted by the RCP, has succeeded in building support for October 22 (also known as O22) as National Anti Police Brutality Day since 1995

RT @RSDUK: "Music had been something that excited me for a long time and I arranged to work part-time as a doctor and part-time in the shop… also on facebook https://www.facebook.com/CookedNews 1 month ago

RT @bookyvikki: It's here! It's ready! Have a listen to @ScotsWhayHae & I having a blether about the best in Scottish books in 2018! https:… also on facebook https://www.facebook.com/CookedNews 1 month ago